Tracy's blog

When I was a kid, I couldn't get enough of the cartoon The Jetson's. I was fascinated with all of the gadgets, especially the robots. Rosie was exactly what I needed. A robot that would clean my room! That would have been awesome. Today, we have all kinds of different robots, but I find one in particular the most fascinating. This fascinating robot is powered by a heart muscle that came from a rat.

Every since I was little, mashed taters have been my weakness. My favorite kind are the instant kind. So simple, open a packet pour it in a pot and add milk. Ten minutes later, "PRESTO!" I have a tasty treat that will do exactly what its meant to do, satisfy my craving. Well, in the computer world there is what I would call the "mashed taters" of APIs. They are called mashups. A mashup is a web program that uses data from more than source or API and creates one integrated tool.

XSL, ASP, ISP, SQL, POP, PHP...... Don't they drive you crazy?! They do me. I constantly hear them thrown around the office in all kinds of situations. Here is another, API. What in the heck does this one mean? Well, API is one of the few I do know. API stands for Application Programming Interface. Wikipedia defines API as "a source code interface that an operating system or library provides to support requests for services to be made of it by computer programs." Wow! Isn't that a mouthful?

A while back when I was doing some work at my mother's house, my sister walked up behind me and looked at what I was doing. I wasn't programming anything too difficult, just a form submission page or something. She said, "I can't believe you do that for a living, I would never be able to do that!" Actually, that comment has been said to me more than several times, but the truth is, it appears a lot harder than it actually is. Look at this statement:

In November 2008, I will be casting my vote for President for the 5th time in my life. I have had some winners and some losers. I have even had one where my vote didn't even count. Some guy named Harry Browne or something like that. Now that I am older, I look back on those "hanging chads" and wonder if the vote I casted the right one. Of course, I can't answer that, because every time I poked a hole in the in the yellow piece paper, the "chad" I left hanging was an uninformed one. It was not because I didn't know anything about the candidates. It was because I only knew the propaganda.

Mozilla.org is now in the early development stage of Firefox 3, to be known as Gran Paradiso. Although Firefox 2 just came out at the end of 2006, Firefox's next major release is due to hit the general public by the fourth or possibly as soon as the third quarter of 2007, just a short time away. In fact, Gran Paradiso Alpha 1 version is being tested by developers across the internet right now as I write this insipid blog entry. If you are interested, you too can be involved in the next release of the superior browser, Firefox 3.

I pondered this question many times when I have seen Web 2.0 mentioned in articles. Of course, I have heard about Web 2.0 for a few years now. You would have to live under a rock not to, but what does it really mean?